Manufacturers are facing fearsome challenges in an increasingly demand-driven economy in which manufacturing agility, rather than finished-goods inventory, is key to delivering customer satisfaction.

Delivering better customer satisfaction requires investing in technologies that will allow employees to become knowledgeable about customer behavior across different channels, product lines, and geographies. Our InformationWeek 500 survey reveals that 40% of manufacturers expect to deliver better business intelligence acto more employees in 2008, higher than the 34% average across all industries and just below industries with more cutting-edge reputations: IT (42%) and logistics and transportation (46%).

A real-world example of the successful use of manufacturing BI is described by Matt Mehlbrech, senior manager for IT innovation with Eaton, a supplier of electrical, aerospace, and other components. "We have a strong cross-group program focused on providing a common BI architecture and strategy, which allows all groups to leverage the core infrastructure," he says. In addition to a BI Council that balances priorities and resources, Eaton has under way a program tying together several critical data elements across the entire business in a data warehouse, aimed at providing better BI to all operations.

Industry Snapshot: Manufacturing